The weird time Nazis made common cause with black nationalists

The black nationalist Nation of Islam and the American Nazi Party didn't have a lot in common, but they did believe in staying as far away from each other's race as possible

George Lincoln Rockwell (centre), self-styled head of the American Nazi Party, standing with group of followers in uniform with Nazi and American flags.Lee Lockwood/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Looking out over a sea of 12,000 black faces at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell told the crowd that their last best chance for black uplift was an alliance with Nazis.

“You know that we call you niggers,” he said. “But wouldn’t you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others all say behind your back?”

Dressed in full Nazi uniform, he had been invited by the rally’s organizers, the black nationalist Nation of Islam, whose leader he soon praised as the “Adolf Hitler of the black man.”

It was one of the oddest political phenomenons of the 1960s. In a decade rife with political extremism, two seemingly polar-opposite groups were so radical that they found themselves sharing the same goals.

Founded in the 1930s, the Nation of Islam was an American movement that married Islamic teachings with black nationalism. Led by Elijah Muhammad, by the 1960s it had adopted the goal of carving out a separate black-only corner of the United States.

Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad speaking in 1964United States Library of Congress

“Twenty million ex-slaves must be permanently separated from our former slavemaster and placed on some land that we can call our own,” said a 1963 speech by Malcolm X, one of the movement’s most prominent spokesmen.

X said it was the only way to “create our own jobs. Control our own economy. Solve our own problems instead of waiting on the American white man to solve our problems for us.”

The American Nazi Party, in turn, was founded by George Lincoln Rockwell in the late 1950s. Although now largely forgotten, Rockwell checks all the boxes as a near-perfect American historical villain.

It was only 15 years after the United States had lost more than 200,000 soldiers liberating Europe from Nazi Germany. In a country filled with Holocaust survivors and wounded vets, Rockwell was making public appearances in a paramilitary uniform, denying the Holocaust and expressing his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

“I think Hitler was a gift from providence,” Rockwell said in an interview with the CBC.

Before civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was giving his “I Have a Dream” speech on the Lincoln Memorial, Rockwell attempted to stop it with a counterdemonstration of 10,000 pro-segregationists (although, ultimately, only 90 showed up and Rockwell failed to obtain a permit).

When Freedom Riders came to desegregate public transportation in the American South, Rockwell was touring around in what he dubbed a “Hate Bus” — a VW Microbus emblazoned with the slogan “WE HATE JEW-COMMUNISM.”

When Rockwell was photographed in 1961 by famed Jewish photojournalist Eve Arnold, he hissed at her: “I’ll make a bar of soap out of you!” Rockwell was so crass and hateful that he repeatedly failed to obtain even the barest acknowledgement from the most anti-civil rights politicians of the era.

In one instance, the Nation of Islam bought a plot of Alabama farmland. Soon, a Klan-led effort leased all the land around their farm as an intimidation tactic — and the black Muslims found that their dairy cows kept getting shot.

But by 1961, Klan members began to view black nationalism as a pleasing alternative to the growing U.S. movement toward nonviolent integration.

As a goodwill gesture, the Klan even reportedly offered more than 20,000 acres of Georgia land to the Nation of Islam, intending to kickstart an exodus of American blacks to segregated homelands.

Speaking just before his 1968 death, Malcolm X said that he personally reviewed the Klan’s land offer, and brokered a truce between the two organizations.

Portrait of American political activist and radical civil rights leader Malcolm X as he holds an 8mm movie camera in London Airport, London, England, July 9, 1964.Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images

“From that day forward the Klan never interfered with the Black Muslim movement in the South,” said X.

The Nation of Islam, in turn, was inclined to trust racists more than other white people. The group held that Caucasians were an inherently evil race created by a mad scientist 6,000 years before. White groups espousing openly evil beliefs, therefore, were at least being honest.

The American Nazi Party espoused a similar segregation dream as the Nation of Islam — even if the details differed. The American Nazis planned to offer a one-way ticket to Africa for every black person in the United States in order to form a new country. Those who chose to remain would be rounded up and placed into reservations.

‘‘They want a chunk of America and I prefer that they go to Africa,” was how Rockwell described the critical difference.

It wasn’t an original idea. Twice in U.S. history, in fact, new African countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia, had been founded by exiled American blacks.

“Race mixing just isn’t going to work,” Rockwell said in a 1966 interview with Alex Haley, the future author of both Roots and the Autobiography of Malcolm X.

He added, “I think, therefore, that we should take the billions of dollars now being wasted on foreign aid to Communist countries which hate us and give that money to our own niggers to build their own civilized nation in Africa.”

While speaking to Haley, Rockwell would use the word “nigger” 80 times and the term “Martin Luther Coon” five times. Haley, in turn, would politely use Rockwell’s preferred appellation of “commander.”

Rockwell made official contact twice with the Nation of Islam.

In 1961, he and several uniformed, swastika-emblazoned supporters attended a massive Nation of Islam rally in Washington, D.C. — where Rockwell notably donated $20 to the cause. “You got the biggest hand you ever got,” joked speaker Malcolm X as the crowd delivered a smattering of applause for the Nazi.

The second time was Rockwell’s 1962 appearance noted in the opening. Although Rockwell had the full backing of Elijah Muhammad, his speech — including his “Heil Hitler!” closer — reportedly began to elicit jeers from the crowd.

A crowd applauds Elijah Muhammad at a 1974 Savior’s Day gathering in Chicago. Rockwell spoke at a similar Savior’s Day event in 1962.National Records and Archives Administration

It wasn’t just a pact of convenience. Rockwell seemed to genuinely revere black nationalist leaders, who had built a much larger and more organized movement that he would ever manage.

Rockwell told other Nazis that Elijah Muhammad’s followers were “admirable human beings in spite of their color.” The Nazi leader told Haley he admired Malcolm X’s courage — and even wished to launch a joint “back to Africa” speaking tour with the black leader.

“He must think I’m nuts!” was X’s reply.

Malcolm X would ultimately break with the Nation of Islam and disavow all the ideology that may have once aligned him with Nazis and the KKK.

After making the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, he returned believing that the United States’ various ethnicities truly could learn to live together. In 1965, he was shot to death by radical Nation of Islam members.

Like so many other political figures of the 1960s, Rockwell would also be assassinated before the decade’s end. Gunned down outside a self-serve laundromat, Rockwell was murdered by former American Nazi Party member John Patler. Rockwell’s father, when told of the shooting, reportedly said he wasn’t surprised at all.

Unlike X, however, Rockwell definitely experienced no spiritual awakening about racial unity before Mauser bullets tore through his head and chest.

In a speech to a UCLA in May 1967, only four months before his death, Rockwell told a loudly derisive audience that Jews were warmongers, profiteers, liars, communist conspirators and traitors.

“From now on whenever they haul out one of those communist spies, you’re going to notice the length of the nose.”